RetroFedHuman trafficking, generally, is a politically correct term for slavery
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I mean with things like sex trafficking, labor trafficking, etc. IMO it should be called slavery, and those affected need to be rescued from slavery.
A pimp enslaves people
The Tate Brothers (allegedly) enslaved people.
IMO, referring to sex/labor trafficking to slavery will show it just how evil it actually is.
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Not really, words have meaning
If you want a concrete example of the difference, let’s say I kidnap someone and keep them as a slave. That’s simply me enslaving someone.
Now let’s say I kidnap someone and sell them to someone else who keeps them as a slave. What have I done? I’ve trafficked a human.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
The name for an entire epoch of history contradicts your claim.
It ain’t trafficking if it’s legal.
Yeah, human trafficking leads to slavery, actively supports slavery, funnels slaves to slave holders, etc… But trafficking is just that. Moving something (in this case, a human) from A to B.
Saying they’re the same thing is sort of like saying that making meth and smoking meth are the same thing. They each can’t realistically exist on a mass scale without the other, but they’re not the same thing.
So I guess we can’t call it “The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade” because none of the people on the boats had been assigned work duties yet?
Cute quip, but the trans-Atlantic slave trade was specifically trafficking slaves. I even said in my original comment that human trafficking can ferry slaves to slave owners. Human trafficking refers to the broader crime of illegally transporting humans, regardless of their status as slaves.
Someone illegally ferrying immigrants across a border is engaging in human trafficking. Are the immigrants enslaved just because they were illegally trafficked? Even if they go about their merry lives in the new country after crossing the border and shaking hands with the trafficker? Because if we define human trafficking strictly by the trade of slaves, then the immigrants who got trafficked would be slaves, right?
Someone illegally transporting their own child across country lines during a custody dispute is engaging in human trafficking. Is that child now their parent’s slave, just because they were illegally trafficked across country lines? I guess so, because trafficking equals slavery, right?
Or maybe we just accept that the two are different crimes. Words mean things, and falsely equating the two is (at best) disingenuous and misleading.
Does this mean that human trafficking is always illegal, whereas slavery may or may not be illegal depending on which century and country we’re talking about?
Well, by definition, to traffick something is to illegally buy or sell something.
Buying, selling, and owning people has not always been illegal, so it’s more that humans couldn’t be trafficked, depending on if it was allowed.
Oh, that’s a good point.
This means that if there’s a restriction on something such as beer and cigarettes, you can legally trade them as long as you follow the rules. That wouldn’t be trafficking.
However, if you’re trying to cross the border with an absurd quantity of cigarettes hidden inside the chassis of your lorry, that could be considered cigarette trafficking.
If you hide heroin in there instead, it’s always drug trafficking, no matter what.
On the other hand, if you’re working for the East India Company and you’re shipping opium to China in the 1800s, it’s perfectly legal according to the Brits. The Chinese would have probably called that drug trafficking though.
Yep! So there is definitely a very real difference between the concept of slavery and human trafficking. They often go hand in hand, but they’re distinct processes.
To have even more fun, there’s also smuggling, which is moving the goods illegally, and that is different than the buying and selling, and that is different than owning.
non english native here wouldnt the trafficking of beer, cigarrettes and drugs over a border be smuggeling as well? and if so, could one smuggel a person as well?
Yeah, smuggling is moving the illegal goods. Trafficking is buying or selling illegal goods.
A lot of times, they’re done together by the same person, but they can also be separately by different people.
I buy some heroin, I’m trafficking. I give it to you to take to my buddy across the border, you’re smuggling. He takes it from you and sells it to others, he’s trafficking.
And if the goods being illegally moved are people, then they are indeed smuggling people. That’s what mules do.
No, human trafficking was very much legal when slavery was the norm. Not all human trafficking, but the one that specifically was about trafficking slaves.
Just recently looked it up
Trafficking = the act of buying or selling usually illegal goods
Source
I guess you’re using that loophole created by the word “usually”. Even though trafficking is usually illegal by definition, it doesn’t always have to be. Building upon that, you can actually use that word for legal activities too, even though most people will misunderstand you as they are automatically thinking of illegal activities.
The most egregious use of this is for entities people otherwise have some respect for. People bristle when I mention that California sends slaves to fight its forest fires.
Historians today have no problem recognizing slavery in historical cultures. They’ll have no problem stating that ancient cultures practiced slavery as a form of punishment, where you could be sentenced to slavery for a crime. But that never transfers to the present day. People get rather offended if you say California uses slave labor. They prefer terms like involuntary or forced labor.
But make no mistake, California sends slaves to fight forest fires.
Tell me more about this, please. Does California use prisoners or is it something else?
Yes. California uses involuntary prison labor to fight forest fires.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/la-wildfires-prisoner-firefighter-program-criticism-rcna187436
We call it involuntary prison labor. But if we are talking about one of the countless ancient societies that used to punish people with involuntary labor, we have no problem calling those people slaves. Rome sentenced thousands of people to slavery in its various mines, and we refer to that as slavery.
We have no problem recognizing slavery in ancient cultures. But when it comes to our society, we find all sorts of euphemisms to avoid using the word “slave.”
Holy crap. That’s so gross to think about.
I would understand if the government asked “Who is able and willing to learn and help,” but to force anyone to fight A WILDFIRE? That’s just sending people to horrible death sentence especially if barely trained.
It reminds me of Putin conscription prisoners to fight in Ukraine, only instead of killing others the government is putting you and your fellow untrained buddies on the line
Also, the inmates have experience fighting fires however due to their criminal record. It can be nigh impossible for an ex-convict to get a job even with their qualifications.
I mean, to be fair, we’re not actually talking the ancient Roman mines here. Those people had incredibly short life expectancies. It’s hard grueling and dangerous work, but it’s not like California is seeing scores of prisoners incinerated either. I certainly haven’t heard of any mass fatalities among these enslaved firefighters.
I say they all have equally horrific connotation. But “forced labor” sounds like “slavery lite edition” when I read it.
Human trafficking is the trading of slaves. It’s just a subset of what goes on around slavery.
You have to remember, in the US slavery isn’t really illegal, it’s just illegal to do privately. The state can, and does, still sentence people to slave labor. So the reason they refer to trafficking is that it’s the illegal part of the slavery.
Then why aren’t we calling it slave trading?
What do you call transporting groups of people for money, when the only restraint is that the state doesn’t want those people where you are taking them?
Against their will or not?
Both
Not both. There is a massive moral difference between these two cases.
Legal and moral only rarely overlap, and usually by accident.
not every trafficked human is a slave!
a refugee may pay a human trafficker to be smuggeled over the border to another nation
a rougue parent may kidnap a child from the other parent and traffick it away, the child may even approve btw
so these example show my point I think
Then not every trafficker is criminal. So why is human trafficking considered a bad thing in itself? From your own post: Slavery is bad. Abductions are bad. But trafficking alone isn’t.
traffiking is per definition illegal, every traffiker is a criminal
Trafficking people out of North Korea is maybe illegal in North Korea, but nobody really cares. Same with Russian deserters.
Slave trading at that point.
Trying to compare forced-labor and human trafficking to chattel slavery obscures and excuses the institution of slavery in the Americas.
Slavery apologists use these arguments. “Slavery is no worse than prison.” “Slavery still happens, and to white people”.
Their are some key differences, I’ll point out three.
no matter how depraved and cruel the conditions of a trafficked person are, they don’t expect the same fate to befall their children and grandchildren.
Human trafficking is illegal and rather looked-down-upon. Chattel slavery was considered normal, routine, necessary, and good throughout the society where it occurred.
Human trafficking victims are legally people with rights recognized by the legal system; their abusers must hide their activities and fear punishment.
No one is comparing it to chattel slavery though. Chattel slavery isn’t the only kind of slavery. Slavery is slavery, chattel or otherwise. Chattel slavery is slavery, human trafficking is slavery.
Slavery as a spectrum is a very odd argument to have.
But im pretty sure slavery has been around since shortly after opposable thumbs.
Tribes/raiders fought and took slaves/hostages/wives.
Intercontinental shipping was a new addition.
As for the generational fate of slaves … the Old Testament of the Bible has some talk of that.
American slavery was dehumanizing and violent. Most slavery would seem to be.
Spectrum wise? Not sure where it falls in the all time world wide list.
E.g. Rome probably better for slaves, Belgian Congo certainly worse.
American slavery was exceptionally evil as far as forms of slavery go. There are other ways to enslave a person without legally owning their body. The modern form of legal American slavery, forced work through incarceration, is objectively still slavery, and slightly less evil than the chattel slavery of the past.
All slavery is inexcusable. All slavery is evil. Not all slavery is chattel slavery.
Saved comment for future arguments. Thank you so much <3
“You might get raped to death or executed when you’re too old for our customers but at least you have rights!”
Such a weird hill you choose to die on
Human trafficking is per definition a form of modern slavery. But also sometimes used as a term to criminalise rescuers who help refugees.
It is an intentional rebranding.
Why because the word slaves invokes all types of racism and therefore it can only happen to those people.. You know those people that aren’t me…
It’s a separate charge, with a distinct meaning, but yes it’s usually used because people are afraid to call it slavery. Human trafficking also includes coyotes (people who clients hire to smuggle them across borders).
The Tates (allegedly but blatantly) trafficked people for the purpose of enslavement.
The more I think about this the more I think we need to bring back calling a slaver a slaver. Not just for the blunt acknowledgement, but also for the distinctions between someone operating an unlicensed brothel where the workers are free to leave vs one where they aren’t, or between a farmer who hires undocumented labor without threatening deportation vs one who will call immigration enforcement when a laborer demands safe working conditions or leaves for a competitor, or between a coyote who leaves you once you’re in and a trafficker who keeps your passport.
I get you, but I see legal distinctions between the two.
Slavery, owning a human being as property for labor, which may include for sex.
Human trafficking, trade of a human being for purposes of labor which may include for sex.
I would say that the Tates witholding passports and pay and all that shit to manipulate women into doing cam work for them, I would call that slavery. If they ever “sold” or “gave” those women to anyone else, I would say that it’s human trafficking.
*Not a lawyer, I had a gut sense and googled the “difference between slavery and human trafficking” as a starting sanity check.
The fact that taking passports works to trap people is proof that passports and borders are evil and must be abolished
It’s also proof that people fundamentally don’t understand their immigration rights. You can always go to an embassy and report your passport as stolen. Hell, you don’t even need an embassy. You can go straight to the cops and file a police report. Even if the cops don’t do anything about it, (they probably won’t), the police report alone will be enough to get you on a plane back to your home country. The various governments around the world accept that lost and stolen passports are inevitable, so they have systems set up specifically to deal with them.
But simply saying that they “take passports” is downplaying things. There is an extreme amount of isolation, intimidation, and financial abuse that goes into it as well. All to ensure victims don’t consider fleeing.
Step 1 of an trafficker’s playbook is to isolate the victim. Isolate them from their friends/family/etc by creating physical distance and taking away their means of communication. Isolate them from local peers by bringing them somewhere they don’t speak the local language. Isolate them economically by taking control of their finances and refusing to give them any money to go anywhere or do anything. Isolate them mentally and emotionally by slowly and methodically convincing them that they don’t deserve better.
Simply saying that they “took away their passports” is an extreme oversimplification, because simply taking the passport isn’t enough by itself. The victim could always just file a report and use that instead. It only works because of the other forms of isolation that the victim is simultaneously experiencing. They legitimately don’t believe they can escape, and the stolen passport is only one part of a much larger system of control.
I think the more logical conclusion is that passports are inadequate.
I also agree that borders need to be abolished but that is a far harder sell for most people.
Now that we have the internet and biometric identifiers, the document should no longer matter.
OP needs to keep a dictionary in the shower.
But then it will get wet
Slavery is legally systematic from historical perspectives. It was a legal thing to do. I disagree if you want to go through the details.
Allegedly must be the Tate brothers’ Middle names.
The difference is the difference between civil asset forfeiture and theft, or capital punishment and murder, or imprisonment and false imprisonment. While analogous in almost every way, the distinction is in whether it is being done legally or illegally. Slavery is legally accepted and enforced. Trafficking is illegal.
Wait… That means drug trafficking is… gasp Those poor drugs!
That’s why we boof them.
i see you’re replying to the joke comments but ignoring the ones posted many hours earlier which helpfully explain what is wrong with the premise of your post (eg, this and this and this).
Because there is nothing to say. I’ve been up voting them because I am learning, not arguing.
“A pimp enslaves people”
I’m not so sure that is always the case. A sex worker can find someone who ensures their safety and pay them to do so. They could also help find clients for them. At no point does the definition of pimp require the person to force the sex worker to do anything.
I guess I got A Pimp Named Slickback in my mind where he hits the women and treats them as objects, “What woman sir, this here’s a ho”
I’m all the protection of sex workers, as long as they have total freedom from such things. If a pimp is providing safety - actual safety, not gang type safety - then I’m all for it.
How did he become a household name lol
Boondocks was an amazing series lolol
Seriously, haven’t watched it in years. Instantly heard him in my head.
That’s not a pimp, that’s a bodyguard.
“Pimp” has specific meaning in the US which criminalizes prostitution:
https://courses2.cit.cornell.edu/sociallaw/student_projects/PimpsandProstitutes.htm
https://bridgelegal.org/what-is-pimp-legal-definitions-criminal-implications/
Common Sex Trafficking Language
“Section 1. Antifa as a Terrorist Threat. Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide…”
Shit, guess all anti-fascists are terrorists now.
Yep.
Oh yes. Its kinda one reason I kinda roll my eyes at juneteenth. Its this arbitrary group that were freed but the bigger thing to me is the change in law which should be the date celebrated. I similarly find birthday holidays to be kinda dumb as to me is should commemorate the most significant thing the person did and usually there is something that can stand as the top thing. Of course celebration should have a lot of education on how it was not made illegal completely in the us (its legal for convicts) and that it goes on around the world. They say the price of a slave is actually cheaper in modern times than it was when there was a slave trade.
The word slave comes from Slavic people being conquered and forced into servitude in the middle ages.
This is conflating organized crime with effectively genocide. It’s not about which is more evil so much as there are practical reasons to have concise and distinct terms for such things.
Human “trafficking” definitely a euphemism that makes people gloss over the horrific reality of slavery.
how is a pimp different than any other capitalist?
how come when it comes to the issue of sex everyone all of a sudden takes offense to someone taking a cut off the top?
aren’t car dealers pimps? aren’t they just car traffickers? isn’t mcdonalds a meat trafficker?
another question: why are women so feeble that a dude can show up at their door in a fur coat and a fedora and be like ‘you’re gonna fuck random dudes and i’m gonna take all the money’ and they’re like ’ok.’
nowhere in culture do we consider this OK behavior so there’s no excuse for it. when men are down and out they suck down steel reserves and live in the park like normal people.
we need to talk about this.
A pimp is effectively, a manager for sex workers. They handle security and advertisement, and in return get a cut of the earnings.
Car dealers are salespeople.
Well for one, we don’t have to worry about a car-pimp coercing his automobiles into service as they’re not sentient beings.
This sounds terribly naive. You try and save a hooker, she’s going to knife you and take your wallet.
That’s a huge generalization.
A friend of mine fell into escort work when times were tough. Then she got out. At no time did she knife anyone.
Hahaha they don’t mean “save her” by picking her up in your car and taking her home, i don’t think.
Violent coercion of women and children into selling sex for their handlers (i.e sexual slavery) is very real. It needs to be shut down by the police, government, et cetera. The utter failure of police to shut down slavery organisations is a big reason people don’t trust the police at all. (Edit: probably adult men are being used as sex slaves right now, too, even in America or europe.)
It has been a long time, but I was reading a story of a woman I think from Myanmar who was promised a good job in her career. The man groomed her into coming to the states. Somehow she got in. I think she was an engineer or a marketer of some sorts. She was going to send money back for her family and daughter.
She got in the U.S., they stole her passport, gave her “uniforms” ie lingerie .
She was very confused until she started getting daily grapes, all day, every day. There were no breaks. There were young men, old men, children, and women, living in one house.
People who are enslaved like that, IIRC, usually die within three to five years
This thread feels very Christian fundie. There’s a lot of definition dancing and cherry picking.
The pimp/prostitute relationship isn’t slavery. Hookers don’t want to be emancipated from hooking anymore than potheads want to be emancipated from their slavish addiction to the devil’s lettuce.